The present invention relates to a vending apparatus comprising of a plurality of cash-less vending machines installed for instance in guest rooms in a hotel, meeting rooms and supermarkets, an accounting machine such as a cash register and memory holders each for each customer enabling him to buy a desired merchandise from any of the vending machines, the sales information such as codes and prices of merchandises sold being stored in the memory holder and being read out by the accounting machine for preparing a bill, and to portions of said apparatus.
There has been devised and demonstrated a vending system wherein an accounting machine such as a cash register with an electronic computer is interconnected through wires with a plurality of vending machines installed in guest rooms and meeting rooms in a hotel or the like so that the sales data transmission may be made between the accounting machine and the vending machines. However, since the accounting machine and the vending machines are interconnected with wires, the greater the number of the vending machines, the greater the number of wires becomes and consequently the higher the installation cost becomes.
In some supermarkets there are installed vending machines from which a customer may buy a desired merchandise with a card bearing a specific code number. The vending machines are connected to an electronic computer so that the codes and prices of the sold merchandise as well as the code number of the customer who has bought said merchandise may be processed for preparing a bill. However, the computer and the vending machines are interconnected through wires so that the installation cost is high.
Furthermore, in some existing hotels or the like the installation of wiring is impossible between the accounting machine or electronic computer and the vending machines.